Tularosa honors cancer victims Saturday

The Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium is having a lumninaria lighting to honor cancer victims on Saturday at the Tularosa Little League Fields beginning at 7:30 p.m. (John Bear/Daily News)

The Tularosa Downwinders Consortium is holding its fourth annual luminaria lighting and prayer service for cancer victims and survivors on Saturday.

Tularosa Village Trustee Fred Tyler said the service begins at 7:30 p.m. at the Tularosa Little League Field at the corner of La Luz Road and Wildcat Turf Loop.

"We will have a blessing by a Mescalero Apache medicine man and, hopefully, appearances by some of the state and federal representatives that have been invited," Tyler said.

He said there are still bills before the United States House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate to have New Mexico recognized for "unknowing victims of the Trinity Site Atomic Bomb Test of July 16, 1945."

"Please ask for support by calling or emailing Rep. Bob Goodlatte and Rep. John Conyers for H.R. 1645, and by calling or emailing Sen. Patrick Leahy and Sen. Chuck Grassley," Tyler said.

Last year, the Tularosa Village Board of Trustees declared July 16 as "Downwinders Day."

According to the Department of Justice, New Mexico is included as a uranium worker state, but not a downwinder state.

That dubious honor belongs to counties in Arizona, Utah and Nevada, though 12 states are considered uranium worker states.

The government considers downwinders as those people who lived near the Nevada nuclear weapons test sites.

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Tyler has previously said parts of New Mexico received high amounts of radiation from the Trinity test and have much higher cancer rates than the national average.

He said the federal government misled people about the amount of radiation that came from the Trinity Site, telling them that it was safe.

The Trinity Site is located about 45 miles away -- as the crow flies -- from Tularosa.

"The levels of radioactivity from the test at the Trinity Site were above dangerous," Tyler said last year. "They were lethal and in some areas near the test were 10,000 times the approved exposure level."